Maya Texture filter

#1

Hi,

should I set the filter of the “file” node of my textures to 0 or so (File/Effects/Filter and filter offset)? I never figured this out. Is it safe in animation too? For diffuse and bump alike?

#2

The default value for the texture and bump node filter is 1, as you know. It’s an ancient artifact from back when people rendered in Maya and it was considered wise to blur your texture rather than increase shading samples in the renderer to smooth out results. As you know it makes everything waaaay too soft. I used to automatically take this down to .1 for good measure, but now, honestly, I usually turn filtering off in texture.

To answer your other questions, it performs a blur at texture read time, so it’s consistent through animations. As for the bump filter, also turn it down to start, especially if the bump is matching color texture features.

#3

I think that you could use mipmap filter with pyramidalized images. If you need a high quality filtering that preserves texture from excessive blurring you can use elliptical filtering. Here’s an article on texture filtering in mr. http://elementalray.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/texture-publishing-to-mental-ray/